Scenery Gorn: Difference between revisions

|''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'' (radio), ''Fit the Eighth.'' }}

 

 

If it's post-apocalyptic, it's a look of abandonment rather that slums/sprawl or recent destruction. Buildings are crumbling, collapsed, torn open, leaning. There are rubble piles at the base of walls, peeling paint. Familiar objects are weathered, rusted, rotted, sun-bleached, and may be encrusted in dirt and dust which has been wetted by rain at some point and dried. Buildings, vehicles, etc may be half-buried in sediment as if a flood had come through, basically they're melted into the ground. Cracked desert soil is common, though not required, the next likely option is jungle-like overgrowth as the Earth retakes the city. Many of these elements are directly based on what has already happened in real abandoned locations.

* ''[[I Am Legend]]''.

* ''[[Independence Day]]'''s multiple shots of ruined New York and Los Angeles after the alien attack. (Also other cities around the world, as much of an afterthought as this parenthesis.) The strongest of these was probably when Jasmine first emerges from the rubble and sees the ruins of Los Angeles, complete with poignant background music.

** LOTR is made of [[Scenery Porn]] during the "good times" parts, and Scenery Gorn during the "struggling times" parts. You could make the argument that LOTR could be referred to as simply Cinemasturbation for its attention to detail in everything.

** The best example is probably the view of the ruination of the Shire in the Mirror of Galadriel (the actual canon Scouring of the Shire was cut from the films, so this was Jackson's way of wedging it in). As Sam and Frodo say in the books, seeing your own home devastated when you remember it being pleasant is far more horrifying than some anonymous landscape that you never knew before it was ruined.

* In the later ''[[Harry Potter]]'' books, as Voldemort has risen to power, Diagon Alley (the reader's original introduction to the fantastical magic world) is depicted with abandoned storefronts and dark figures. Evidence that the magical world is truly turning into a dark and unhappy place. The only exception is the Weasley twins' store, which stands out as a colorful and delightful shop... the reader knows it would have been just another store in the first or second books.

* ''[[Swan Song (novel)|Swan Song]]'' by Robert R. McCammon, which is hardly surprising as it deals with the aftermath of a nuclear war.

* The Zone from ''[[Roadside Picnic]]'' is a town that got turned into a disaster area by an alien visitation. It's described as looking completely normal, if deserted, at first glance, yet having many subtle unsettling details - non-decaying trucks, shadows that point in the wrong direction. It's riddled with invisible death traps and physics-defying artifacts.

* ''[[wikipedia:Aftermath: Population Zero|Aftermath: Population Zero]]'' and ''[[Life After People]]'' are both [[Speculative Documentary|Speculative Documentaries]] that focus largely on envisioning the world as it would look if humanity suddenly disappeared. Civilization collapses into Scenery Gorn, but over longer periods of time it blossoms into [[Scenery Porn]], as plants and wilderness reclaim everything.

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* ''[[Romantically Apocalyptic]]'' has some in almost ''every'' single panel.

* The Plaguelands in ''[[Uncreation]]'' are full of [https://web.archive.org/web/20130906214451/http://uncreation.comicdish.com/?pageID=2 bizarre ruins]. What we've seen of [https://web.archive.org/web/20130906214958/http://uncreation.comicdish.com/?pageID=76 civilization] also seems pretty run-down.

 

 

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